France’s IDEMIA gets NPCI stamp for RuPay cards

• French company IDEMIA, a global leader in augmented identity, said it has become the first company to be given the certification to manufacture and personalize RuPay chip contact and contactless cards on the qSPARC v2 platform.

• The qSPARC is a duel interface open loop payment specification, with the option of loading multiple payment applications – up to 20 payment applications – on a single card.

• The certification is issued by the National Payments Corporation of India, after testing all payment scenarios, and thus ensuring that the cards manufactured by IDEMIA will work seamlessly at all payment acceptance devices. With this, cardholders can use a single card for multiple payment options such as for the metro, bus, parking, toll, loyalty, and at retail outlets.

• The first version of this card was deployed by Kochi Metro, Bangalore Bus Transport, Ahmedabad Smart City, and will soon be delivered to prospective customers in Nagpur, Noida Metro and Navi Mumbai bus transport ticketing.

• This fosters increased penetration of digital payments by enabling banks to facilitate their cardholders to pay digitally at merchants and at transit points with a single card.

• Going forward, qSPARC is seen steering the National Common Mobility Card (NCMC) as well as being widely used in Smart Cities.